A new block for Giulia

Last week was pretty dark, there’s something awful about tearing a apart shiny new engine. The block was no good, a corrosion hole had worked its way through to an oil way, hidden behind one of the cylinder head studs. Oil, even under the small amount of pressure from the fuel pump I used to test the block, was rushing into the water jacket. Can that be repaired? Yeah, sure. Why not? But at what cost? and how long would that take?. It certainly couldn’t be done locally. Who would remove the studs? Who’d put them back? I don’t want to think about that.

So on Friday morning last week I called Kevin at AK Classics, with my bad news. I needed an early 105 1600 block, not all that common, really. At that point I would have taken anything, I was quite happy to put my 502 block (a genuine Giulia Sprint GT engine, 1963-1966) in the corner and use something else for the trip.

Good news, Kevin said he had couple of early engines in storage, and that he’d let me know what he had once he had taken a look. On Monday this week I got the call. Not only did he have two early 1600s but one of them was a 502 block. I shit you not.

So, four days later this block now sits on my work bench, and Giulia will soon be correct and original again.

So not only is this block correct for my car, it’s in really great shape. I know it looks gross and dirty now, but under that layer of grime is a straight, undamaged example of a 502 block, with beautiful cylinder head studs.

This is the blog covering the Dargle to Dargle expedition, a 15 000 mile journey in a vintage Alfa Romeo across the world. Check out the different pages for posts from the expedition, photographs and videos.